In recent years, wide-area ablation of cardiac tissue using balloons has been developed as an alternative to point-by-point ablation procedures. Several types of cardiac-ablation balloon catheters have been introduced. Among these are cryoballoons which use freezing (sometimes referred to as cryo energy) to ablate tissue, radio-frequency hot balloons which use radio-frequency energy for ablation, ultrasonic balloons which deliver focused ultrasonic energy to the tissue, and laser balloons which use light energy as the means of ablation.
The use of cardiac-ablation balloon catheters for the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation has become an important medical procedure such that it is estimated that in 2016, there were more than 80,000 such procedures worldwide. This common tachyarrhythmia (atrial fibrillation) is often triggered by ectopic foci in and around the pulmonary veins. Prior to the use of cardiac-ablation balloons for this treatment, ablation was carried out using point-by-point ablation strategies in order to electrically isolate the pulmonary veins.
A major shortcoming in the use of cardiac-ablation technology has been that the electrocardiologist performing such procedures has had no good way to visualize after ablation has taken place just where the ablation has been applied. Since most often ablation is done at more than one location in the heart (e.g., there are four pulmonary veins), it would be important and extremely useful to the electrophysiologist to be able to refer visually to the geometry of the entire procedure as it proceeds. The present invention is a method which provides this capability to the physician both during a procedure and after the procedure (by virtue of a stored record).
Some of the technology used in the inventive method disclosed herein involves method steps applicable to a method for rapidly generating a 3D map of a cardiac parameter in a region of a living heart using single-plane fluoroscopic images as disclosed within a co-pending United States Patent Application titled “Rapid 3D Medical Parameter Mapping”, application Ser. No. 15/487,245 (herein referred to as Sra et al.), filed on Apr. 13, 2017.